Migrant women ask protection from husbands’ violence

Two married migrants women were killed by the violence of their Korean husbands during this month. It touched off a rally in front of Deoksu Palace in downtown Seoul Wednesday (July 18) by some 150 migrant women living here.

According to the police, Lee Sun-ok, an ethnic Korean living in China, was stabbed to death by her husband, identified only as Hong, 68, at Gangdong–gu, eastern Seoul, earlier this month. Two days later, another migrant woman Kim Young-bun lost her life by the violence of her drunken husband in Cholwon, Kangwon Province.

Earlier in March this year. a Vietnamese woman identified as Ms. Pamtiroan, 39, was also killed by her husband suffering from mental disease in Jungsun, Kangwon Province.

In the rally held to pay tribute to those who lost their lives by home violence, immigrant women issued a statement in which they said “we are afraid of the Korean government’s attitude keeping silent on the rampant fatal violence against immigrant women.”

They also asked the Korean government to improve the living condition of the immigrant women systematically and strongly punish Korean husbands wielding violence against their helpless migrant wives.

“The murder cases are not the matter of someone else, but the matter of all migrant women here. We feel anger and helplessness before the reality of being killed by husbands who are supposed to protect us,” continued the statement.

It also asked the government to provide a legal basis designed to prevent those feared to cause trouble against their wives with a record of alcoholism, mental disease and violence from being able to get married with immigrant women.

They also complained that they have no other choice but to endure such unwarranted home violence due to their sojourn problem and asked to change the related legal system.

A total of 50 women migrants-related institutions such as Women Migrants Humanrights Center which hosted this rally, decided to unfold a signature-collecting campaign to secure the sojourn right of women migrants and policy proposal activity such as newly-established special-case clauses of laws banning household violence, the Korean Nationality Act, and a revision of immigration law.

Migrant women who lost their lives owing to household violence, totaled 10 peoples so far including those from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Mongol.

news@theasian.asia